Penmarric (97 page)

“I must show Mother. I mean well,” she said, “although to be frank I don’t believe in lavishing sympathy on the bereaved.”

However, she was so much taken aback by my mother’s bedridden state that the next morning she cut some flowers from the garden at Penmarric and asked me to drive her back to the farm for a second visit.

“Now, Mother,” she said briskly, sweeping into my mother’s room with an armful of exotic blooms, “I don’t think it’s good for you to lie here and mope. Why don’t you come to stay with us in Cambridge for a few days? You wouldn’t even have to face a train journey since Eddy has ordered a car and chauffeur to drive us home, and we could arrange for you to return to Cornwall by car when it’s time for you to leave.”

“No,” said my mother.

“Mother, I really do think—”

“It’s kind of you, Lizzie, but no.”

There was nothing to be done. She was adamant that nothing would induce her to leave her home.

“Old people are so stubborn,” said Lizzie, exasperated, annoyed that her generous gesture had been rejected so peremptorily. “What can we do with her? Anyway, how long can she go on living in this house on her own with only that simple-minded old servant who’s half blind and practically dumb? Supposing she had an accident?”

“I shall have a telephone installed,” I said, “and I expect I shall visit her nearly every day. She’ll be all right.”

“She ought to move to Penmarric where she can be properly looked after.”

“My dear Lizzie,” I said, amused, “you obviously don’t know Mama! No one tells
her
what to do. Wild horses wouldn’t drag her to Penmarric.”

“Well,” said Lizzie with a quick shrug, “she’s your worry, not mine. I suppose Eddy and I must be thinking about returning to Cambridge. The girls will be missing us … By the way, what’s happening to Esmond? Perhaps I ought to have the poor boy to stay. I don’t suppose he wants to remain in Cornwall after all this.”

“He’s already made arrangements to return to Scotland, I think. But perhaps during the next school holidays—”

“Yes, I must invite him to Cambridge. By the way, I suppose there’s no further word from Mariana?”

“None.”

But a letter arrived three days later. Esmond had by that time left for Scotland, Lizzie and her husband had returned to Cambridge and Helena had gone on a visit to her Warwickshire friends before making arrangements to go abroad. The letter with its French stamp and Riviera postmark, was addressed to me in Mariana’s elegant handwriting.

“My dear Jan-Yves,” she had written. “I do hope all went well at the funerals and that they weren’t too ghastly. Of course I thought of everyone constantly and wished I could have been there, but life has been extremely trying just lately and when I received your telegram with the news I was slightly embarrassed financially and could not have afforded the fare home. It really is so dreary not to have quite enough to do as one pleases on such occasions, and since I would like to come home and feel it’s my duty to see Mama, I was wondering if you could be terribly sweet and wire me a hundred pounds? I simply hate to ask you, darling, but really I’ve had one misfortune after another this year and everything is frightfully difficult. I would so much love to see darling Esmond—is he still at Penmarric? I do hope he hasn’t gone back yet to that dreary house in Scotland. Does Esmond talk of me much? I think of him so often.

“Once again, darling, I can’t tell you how devastated I feel and how sorry I am for that nice man Donald McCrae and for Helena. Of course Helena hardly had the ideal marriage, did she, since her husband went off and left her for three years, but I suppose any marriage is better than none at all, poor woman. I do feel so full of pity for her. My fondest love to Mama, and if Esmond is still with you tell him how much I miss him and how I’m so longing to see him again. Now that he’s older perhaps he can begin to understand some of the difficulties which resulted in our separation from each other. Do tell him that I can explain everything and that I’ve always loved him just as much as I used to even though we’ve been apart for so many years.

“Please write soon, Jan darling, all my love, Mariana.”

I sighed, reread the letter and sighed again. I had little inclination to help Mariana, and since probate hadn’t yet been granted I didn’t have a hundred pounds to send her without batting an eyelid. I sat down, took up my pen and tried to phrase a polite but firm reply.

“Dear Mariana,” I wrote baldly at last, “do you really want to come to Penmarric? Helena is away, Mama hasn’t asked for you, and Esmond has gone home to Scotland. If you still want to come back notwithstanding these facts, let me know and I’ll send you the money for your fare. I’m sorry to hear  things haven’t been going well for you, but trust your luck will change again very soon. Yours, Jan-Yves.”

She did not reply, although whether that was because her circumstances improved or because she no longer wanted to come home, I could not tell. I informed my mother that Mariana had written but decided not to show her the letter.

“She didn’t write to me,” my mother said. “She never wrote to offer sympathy. She only wrote to you because she wanted money.”

That was perfectly true, but I thought it was tactful not to comment, and after that we did not speak of Mariana for some time.

It was the day after I had answered Mariana’s letter that I found time to drive to Morvah at last and confront Rebecca. She had not been present at Philip’s funeral and neither had Jonas, although Deborah had turned up with Simon Peter and his wife. I had not been able to have a word in private with Deborah after the service, but the only conclusion I could reach on the subject of Rebecca’s absence was that she was still too upset to face me. This made me angry; I wasn’t surprised that she should have been upset and disappointed to learn that Philip had changed his mind about making Jonas his heir, but I did think she would be sensible enough to see reason after a few days and admit to herself that I wasn’t to blame for the situation. If she did blame me, I told myself, and if she was determined to make a big scene to me about something that wasn’t my fault, she couldn’t love me nearly as much as she’d sworn she did. It was she who had promised that Jonas shouldn’t come between us in the future; if she went back on her word now I would know I had done the right thing in staying unmarried to her, and if I had any sense I should then see to it that the issue of marriage wasn’t raised between us again.

I admit I was nervous when I arrived at Deveral Farm, but so strong was my desire to face her and find out what was going on in her mind that I didn’t stay nervous for long. When I walked around the house to the back door I found her hanging out some washing in the yard; Jonas, chewing a currant bun, was seated on a nearby water butt, and beyond the open window I glimpsed Deborah rolling pastry in the kitchen. As I rounded the corner of the house and came upon them they all paused to stare at me in silence.

After a moment I said shortly, “Perhaps I can have a word with you alone, Rebecca.”

There was another pause. Deborah began to roll the pastry in a furious rush of energy, and Jonas sank his teeth once more into his currant bun.

“I’ve nothing to say to you,” said Rebecca stonily at last. “Nothing. And you know why.”

“Why?”

“You tricked my boy out of his inheritance.”

So it was just as I had feared. She was, as I had always known, utterly unreliable. Just because she had sworn she loved me too much to let Jonas come between us and I had been fool enough to believe she meant what she said, I had come within an ace of a disastrous second marriage. For disaster it would most certainly have been. It was no use her promising not to make scenes or have tantrums whenever she felt like it. When she felt like making life difficult for me she would make life difficult for me—because she didn’t love me enough to know any better.

My patience snapped. My anger mounted. For ten long years she had called the tune and beckoned me back to her bedroom whenever it suited her to do so, but she had called the tune and beckoned me back for the last time. I turned aside. “There was no question of me tricking Jonas out of his inheritance,” I said abruptly. “It was you who lost it for him, not I. If you hadn’t made that ridiculous scene when Jonas ran away from the sea shore—”

The kitchen door banged. Deborah had dropped the rolling pin and fled to the front room to escape from the scene. I stopped speaking, and as I hesitated Jonas slid off the water butt, planted his two little feet firmly on the ground and parked his currant bun on the window sill.

“I didn’t run away,” he announced. “And she didn’t make any scene. You leave my mother alone.”

I ignored him. “Rebecca, let’s get this straight once and for all. First, I didn’t trick Jonas out of the inheritance. Philip changed his will after you’d rejected all the kindness and generosity he had shown the child. Secondly, I knew this and kept the knowledge from you simply because Philip asked me to do so and I promised him I would. Thirdly—”

“You deceived me. All through these last few months when we’ve been so close—”

“I didn’t deceive you. I simply honored my promise to Philip.”

“You leave my mother alone,” said Jonas, very tough and pugnacious. “You get off our land or I’ll fight you.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Rebecca to me sullenly. “I don’t want to see you any more.”

“Very well,” I said, losing my temper. “I shall never come here again. Never, do you understand? And this time ‘never’ means ‘never’ and not ‘later,’ so don’t try and pick me up again in St. Just when you’re feeling lonely. If you can’t trust me as a woman should trust someone she loves, then your love can go to hell as far as I’m concerned and I want no part of it.”

“How can I trust you?” she shouted at me. “I’ve never been able to trust you, never! You’ve never loved me as I loved you—there was always some other woman somewhere—”

“Only because I couldn’t get what I wanted from you without having to go on my knees for it!”

Jonas chose that moment to dance up to me with his fists clenched. “You be quiet!” he yelled. “You be quiet or I’ll punch you, on the nose!”

I hardly heard him. I was still looking over his head at Rebecca. “Well, I’m not going on my knees for it any more,” I said furiously. “You can keep what you’ve got. There are other women who have got more than you anyway—women with a little less weight in the wrong places and a hell of a lot more willingness to please.”

I stopped. There was a silence. She was still looking at me, and her eyes were wide and dark and uncertain.

“Younger women,” I said.

I saw her flinch, but I saw nothing else. Turning on my heel abruptly, I walked blindly around the side of the house to my car and drove out of her life with my foot pushed down against the accelerator as hard as it would go.

She wrote to me two weeks later. It was a stiff, formal little note saying she regretted the scene and would like to see me again.

I didn’t reply.

Presently she wrote to me again. This time it was a long muddled letter full of passion and pleas to be forgiven. Would I please come to dinner at the farm on any evening I cared to name?

I tore the letter up and threw it away.

A few days later she telephoned from a public callbox in Penzance.

“Listen, Jan,” she said, “I made a mistake. I know I did. Please believe me when I say I’m sorry. I’ll never distrust you again, I promise. I’ll never tell you not to call. It was all a mistake.”

“It was one mistake too many, my dear,” I said. “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m sorry.” And I hung up before I was driven by weakness to forgive her and go rushing back to Roslyn Farm.

“If my sister-in-law Mrs. Hugh telephones again,” I said to Medlyn, “I don’t wish to speak to her. You can tell her I’m out.”

“Yes, sir,” said my butler with respect.

Everyone had respect for me nowadays. Why not? Times had changed. I was no longer a penniless nobody with a disgraceful record who worked for a salary on his rich brother’s estate. I was master of Penmarric, living in the house I loved with my lifelong ambition attained; I was one of the wealthiest young men in Cornwall, able to do exactly as I pleased and come and go exactly as I wished. The ugly duckling, playing true to form, had become a splendid swan, and no one was more pleased than I was by the fairy-tale transformation. I now had everything I wanted.

And yet …

It’s really most remarkable how the human race is so seldom satisfied with what it’s got. Give a man the world and he’s still pining for the moon.

“Now’s the time for you to get married again,” said Lizzie busily when I telephoned her one evening to stave off my loneliness. “Why don’t you come up to Cambridge for Christmas? I can line up a whole host of charming girls for you to meet and we can all have a marvelous time! Why don’t you come?”

“I can’t leave Mama alone at Christmas.”

“I’ll write and invite her to come to Cambridge too.”

“She wouldn’t come, Lizzie. You know she won’t leave the farm.”

“Well, that’s her mistake, isn’t it? I fail to see why you should be penalized for her selfishness.”

“It’s not a question of being penalized—”

“Oh yes it is! She’s preying on you just as she preyed on Philip! Really, Jan, I can’t think why you’re so sentimental about her all of a sudden! Why
shouldn’t
you leave her alone for once? She left you alone for six whole years when you were a child!”

“She was there when I needed her,” I said. “I didn’t need her when I was a child. Any kind stranger can bring up a baby until he’s six years old, and I had my kind stranger. But when I needed my mother later she was there.”

“Oh fiddlesticks!” cried Lizzie in a temper and hung up in high dudgeon.

She phoned again the next day. Her manner was meek, contrite and cunningly persuasive. She was sorry she had lost her temper, she said; her anger had merely stemmed from disappointment; she had set her heart on having me to stay for Christmas, but perhaps after all I was right and it would be wrong for me to leave Cornwall then. However, if I wanted to make a visit early in the new year …